The Dover, PA "monkey trial" or The second time as farce

(Photo::Ryan Donnell for The New York Times)
Steven Stough and Bryan Rehm, right, are among 11 parents suing the district over the policy. The case is to open Monday in Harrisburg, Pa.

According to New York Times reporter Laurie Goodstein
(Sept. 26, 2005)

Eleven... parents in Dover [PA.] were outraged enough to sue the school board and the district, contending that intelligent design - the idea that living organisms are so inexplicably complex, the best explanation is that a higher being designed them - is a Trojan horse for religion in the public schools.
With the new political empowerment of religious conservatives, challenges to evolution are popping up with greater frequency in schools, courts and legislatures. But the Dover case, which begins Monday in Federal District Court in Harrisburg, is the first direct challenge to a school district that has tried to mandate the teaching of intelligent design.
What happens here could influence communities across the country that are considering whether to teach intelligent design in the public schools, and the case, regardless of the verdict, could end up before ...[a newly reconfigured] Supreme Court.
Dover, a rural, mostly blue-collar community of 22,000 that is 20 miles south of Harrisburg, had school board members willing to go to the mat over issue. But people here are well aware that they are only the excuse for a much larger showdown in the culture wars.

The argument of the Dover 11 has been strongly reinforced by recent scientific findings that support evolution; but,then this battle isn't over scientific evidence, is it? It's really a con game being perpetrated by a few very slick snake oil sellers. If you have any doubts about this listen to[Dover school] board member William Buckingham, who urged his colleagues to include intelligent design in ninth-grade science classes.

"Nearly 2,000 years ago, someone died on a cross for us, ... Shouldn't we have the courage to stand up for him?"

(quoted by Josh Getlin, LA Times Staff Writer)


According to Washington Post staff writers Rick Weiss and David Brown
(Sept. 26, 2005; Page A08)

Evolution's repeated power to predict the unexpected goes a long way toward explaining why so many scientists and others are practically apoplectic over the recent decision by a Pennsylvania school board to treat evolution as an unproven hypothesis, on par with "alternative" explanations such as Intelligent Design (ID), the proposition that life as we know it could not have arisen without the helping hand of some mysterious intelligent force.
Today, in a courtroom in Harrisburg, Pa., a federal judge will begin to hear a case that asks whether ID or other alternative explanations deserve to be taught in a biology class. But the plaintiffs, who are parents opposed to teaching ID as science, will do more than merely argue that those alternatives are weaker than the theory of evolution.
They will make the case -- plain to most scientists but poorly understood by many others -- that these alternatives are not scientific theories at all
"What makes evolution a scientific explanation is that it makes testable predictions," Lander said. "You only believe theories when they make non-obvious predictions that are confirmed by scientific evidence."

It is extremely hard to believe that this battle is going on in the 21st century. But it is important to remember "...that all great incidents and individuals of world history occur, as it were, twice. ...the first time as tragedy, the second as farce."
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